Thursday, July 30, 2015

Kerry's disrespectful mocking stance on Israel, and Congress

It is to Kerry's credit that he pressed the Iranian government to stop calling for the destruction of Israel, and, in somewhat restrained language, informed it that chants of "Death to America" are not helpful.

Apparently he was unsuccessful. One wonders if Kerry was chagrined that on the very day the deal was signed, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called publicly for death to America.

Kerry's disrespectful mocking stance on Israel, and Congress - The Commentator
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http://www.thecommentator.com/article/6010/kerry_s_disrespectful_mocking_stance_on_israel_and_congress

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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Iran Deal Gives Ayatollahs More Money Than USA Has Given to Israel Since 1948


Iran Deal Gives Ayatollahs More Money Than USA Has Given to Israel Since 1948
Dave BlountJul 28, 2015
Some complain about the massive amount of aid the USA has given to Israel over the decades. No worries; Barack Hussein has made up for all of it:

The Iran deal will provide Iran with a cash windfall as sanctions are eased and assets are unfrozen. The total amount is estimated to be as high as $150 billion. If so, the Iran deal would give more cash to Iran than the $124.3 billion U.S. has given in total aid to Israel since 1948.

US aid has allowed Israel to survive as a tiny island of civilization surrounded by vociferously hostile Muslims who want to destroy it. We'll see what even more money allows the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism to do.

It's amazing how a single president can undo all the works of all previous presidents, and still have so much time for golf.

http://pulse.me/s/4psXGQ

... read more

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Who's out of touch?

Isn't it ironic that the two leaders in the polls are also the two richest in the contest...?
Trump and Clinton both have more money than Romney, who it was said was out of touch with the middle class because of his money.
Ha! Irony indeed.

If you want candidates with a middle class tally of assets, go with Sanders and Rubio

Monday, July 27, 2015

Recession Warning: Durable Goods New Orders falling 5 months in a row

Durable Goods new orders has now fallen 5 months in a row (after revisions) flashing a orangey/red recession warning.

 

After 2 weak months, Durable Goods bounced more than expected in June (+3.4% vs +3.2% exp) - though non-seasonally-adjusted dropped 3.1% MoM. But ex-Transports remain deeply in recession territory.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-27/durable-goods-bounces-revised-lower-yoy-declines-flash-us-recession-warning

EPA Said Global Warming Unproven To Obtain A Legal Ruling For Their Climate Regulations

Scalia is right: CO2 is not a polutant!

EPA Said Global Warming Unproven To Obtain A Legal Ruling For Their Climate Regulations |l
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/25/epa-said-global-warming-unproven-to-obtain-a-legal-ruling-for-their-climate-regulations/

Dr. Tim Ball

Courts will not sit in judgment of scientific disputes. A lawyer told me it becomes "your paper" against "my paper" and courts argue they're not qualified to make the required scientific judgments. This is a reasonable position and causes some to advocate for "scientific" courts, but that is not normally necessary. Application of the scientific method of hypothesis, skeptical analysis, publication, and peer review, do the job. It is precisely the failure of these applications that cause false climate science to exist. Because of the court's position, including the US Supreme Court, they are vulnerable to exploitation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used the vulnerability to achieve a political goal. It seems that proof they did it deliberately is in the position they took about global warming. In the EPA machinations to establish regulatory and bureaucratic control over CO2 they had to argue that global warming was unproven.

Here is the orchestrated scenario, based on a form of argument proposed by White House Science Advisor John Holdren, in the book EcoScience, Population, Resources, Environment. Writing about action on the false claim of overpopulation he said,

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

He says, "it has been concluded", but who reached the conclusion? He did. Who decides when the crisis is "sufficiently severe"? He does. Not only do you build the straw man, but you also control the fire.

It is possible the EPA arranged for Massachusetts and a few other states to file a petition against them for failing to regulate CO2 as a harmful substance. Of course, it was the EPA who determined it was a harmful substance. The EPA rejected the responsibility, and that led to a series of legal actions. The EPA wanted the case to end up before the US Supreme Court. Here are the Facts of the Case. (You can listen to the oral arguments at the web site).

Massachusetts and several other states petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asking EPA to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming from new motor vehicles. Massachusetts argued that EPA was required to regulate these "greenhouse gases" by the Clean Air Act – which states that Congress must regulate "any air pollutant" that can "reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare."

EPA denied the petition, claiming that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Even if it did, EPA argued, the Agency had discretion to defer a decision until more research could be done on "the causes, extent and significance of climate change and the potential options for addressing it." Massachusetts appealed the denial of the petition to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and a divided panel ruled in favor of EPA.

The EPA argued the Clean Air Act does not authorize them to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. It is here they had to argue that the information is insufficient about global warming to reach a conclusion and requires more research. They said they had the authority not to act.

…the Agency had discretion to defer a decision until more research could be done on "the causes, extent and significance of climate change and the potential options for addressing it."

This contradicts the certainties of the IPCC. Their Summary For Policymakers (SPM) written specifically for agencies like the EPA, states.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

IPCC defines Extremely Likely as 95-100%. It appears either the EPA believes their statement to the Court is true or the IPCC is wrong, or they misled the Court.

Analysis of the Supreme Court conclusion provides some evidence.

 

By a 5-4 vote the Court reversed the D.C. Circuit and ruled in favor of Massachusetts. The opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens held that Massachusetts, due to its "stake in protecting its quasi-sovereign interests" as a state, had standing to sue the EPA over potential damage caused to its territory by global warming.

This argument uses the IPCC bias that warming is only a cost – there are no benefits. It was the argument Patrick Michaels made well recently before the Committee of Natural Resources.

The Court rejected the EPA's argument that the Clean Air Act was not meant to refer to carbon emissions in the section giving the EPA authority to regulate "air pollution agent[s]". The Act's definition of air pollutant was written with "sweeping," "capacious" language so that it would not become obsolete.

This outcome is precisely what the EPA wanted. They acted to lose and thus have the power of the US Supreme Court to justify their action.

Finally, the majority ruled that the EPA was unjustified in delaying its decision on the basis of prudential and policy considerations. The Court held that if the EPA wishes to continue its inaction on carbon regulation, it is required by the Act to base the decision on a consideration of "whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change."

Now the Court provided the second leg the EPA sought. They must act because CO2 is both a pollutant and is causing climate change.

The dissenting opinions are revealing.

Chief Justice Roberts's dissenting opinion argued that Massachusetts should not have had standing to sue, because the potential injuries from global warming were not concrete or particularized (individual and personal).

 

Justice Roberts apparently knows enough about global warming to realize the impact on Massachusetts is not easy to determine and speculative.

Justice Scalia's dissent argued that the Clean Air Act was intended to combat conventional lower-atmosphere pollutants and not global climate change.

 

Justice Scalia correctly identified the difference between pollution and climate change. This indicates he knows CO2 is not a pollutant.

It was not difficult for the EPA to mislead the Justices because they avoid sciences cases. Also, the Justices were hampered because the public didn't know that the case was primarily a decision of Administrative Law.

Federal administrative law primarily concerns the powers and procedures of Federal administering agencies in relation to the public (but usually not in criminal matters).

Consider these comments by the Justices in their conclusion. They manifest the confusion exploited by the EPA.

Although we have neither the expertise nor the authority to evaluate these policy judgments, it is evidence that they have nothing whatever to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change.

 

Despite that the Justices wrote,

On the merits of contrary to EPA's position, we hold that the Clean Air Act's sweeping definition of air pollutant unambiguously covers greenhouse gases.

It doesn't matter how "sweeping" the definition, no greenhouse gas is a pollutant. Then the Justices apply Administrative Law.

 

We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand, EPA must make an endangerment finding, or whether policy concerns can inform EPA's actions in the event that it make such a finding.

We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.

 

So there it is. In future court cases and in the public forum we can cite the EPA argument to delay any action,

until more research could be done on "the causes, extent and significance of climate change and the potential options for addressing it."

The courts are correct not to involve themselves in scientific disputes when it is a legitimate scientific issue. The difference, as I pointed out to the lawyer, is that in climate science, it is "our paper" against "their paper", but "their paper" is created with falsified, corrupted and manipulated data. The case becomes one of illegalities, not science, and that is in the jurisdiction of the court and easy for anyone to understand and judge.

Ready for Oligarchy

The choice is clear. There is none.

Virginia and Florida have both been overrun with immigrants, virtually guaranteeing the next president will be a Democrat.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Rodham at the Lemonade Stand

Do you have a permit? Do you pay them $15/hour? How about workman's comp?

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Technology today

"All this technology today is making us antisocial." Photo source (1946, NYC): http://t.co/j4njFms2Wz

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Obama's Minimum Wage Utopia Just Hit A Brick Wall

You should join Caitlin Jenner, become a single mom, and reap the federal benefits...

Obama's Minimum Wage Utopia Just Hit A Brick Wall

Jul 22, 2015

Who could have possibly seen this coming? Almost three years we first detailed how America has become an entitlement nation where "work is punished." It appears President Obama is about to discover this first hand as his populist 'raise the minimum wage' strategy is showing yet another major unintended consequence. On the same day as New York acts to mandate a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers, Seattle's $15 minimum wage law - which is supposed to lift workers out of poverty and off public assistance - has hit a snag. As Fox News reports, evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise – in a bid to keep overall income down so they don't lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent. So not only is work 'punished' it is now 'disinentivized by mandate' as part-time America toils amid ever-rising costs of living.

 

As we previously explained,

This isthe painful reality in America: for increasingly more it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work.

 

This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantitied, and explained by Alexander, "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."

 

 

We realize that this is a painful topic in a country in which the issue of welfare benefits, and cutting (or not) the spending side of the fiscal cliff, have become the two most sensitive social topics. Alas, none of that changes the matrix of incentives for most Americans who find themselves in a comparable situation: either being on the left side of minimum US wage, and relying on benefits, or move to the right side at far greater personal investment of work, and energy, and... have the same disposable income at the end of the day.

And so, as Fox News reports, it is no surprise that the sudden gains in income from a government-mandated $15 minimum wage would tip some over the edge of their handouts entitlement... and thus dicincentize work altogether...

Seattle's $15 minimum wage law is supposed to lift workers out of poverty and move them off public assistance. But there may be a hitch in the plan.

 

Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise – in a bid to keep overall income down so they don't lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent.

 

Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.

 

"If they cut down their hours to stay on those subsidies because the $15 per hour minimum wage didn't actually help get them out of poverty, all you've done is put a burden on the business and given false hope to a lot of people," said Jason Rantz, host of the Jason Rantz show on 97.3 KIRO-FM.

 

The twist is just one apparent side effect of the controversial -- yet trendsetting -- minimum wage law in Seattle, which is being copied in several other cities despite concerns over prices rising and businesses struggling to keep up.

 

The notion that employees are intentionally working less to preserve their welfare has been a hot topic on talk radio. While the claims are difficult to track, state stats indeed suggest few are moving off welfare programs under the new wage.

 

Despite a booming economy throughout western Washington, the state's welfare caseload has dropped very little since the higher wage phase began in Seattle in April. In March 130,851 people were enrolled in the Basic Food program. In April, the caseload dropped to 130,376.

 

At the same time, prices appear to be going up on just about everything.

 

Some restaurants have tacked on a 15 percent surcharge to cover the higher wages. And some managers are no longer encouraging customers to tip, leading to a redistribution of income. Workers in the back of the kitchen, such as dishwashers and cooks, are getting paid more, but servers who rely on tips are seeing a pay cut.

 

Some long-time Seattle restaurants have closed altogether, though none of the owners publicly blamed the minimum wage law.

 

"It's what happens when the government imposes a restriction on the labor market that normally wouldn't be there, and marginal businesses get hit the hardest, and usually those are small, neighborhood businesses," said Paul Guppy, of the Washington Policy Center.

*  *  *

As we previously concluded, with more than half of welfare spending going to working families...

The irony here seems to be that because companies would rather spend their money on raises for "supervisors" and on stock buybacks which benefit the very same supervisory employees who are likey to own stocks (and which artificially inflate the bottom line), everyday taxpayers just like the ones who can't get a raise end up footing the bill via public assistance programs. The companies meanwhile, get to utilize nice little tricks like corporate tax inversions in order to avoid paying their share of the assistance handed out to the very same employees they underpay.

Obama's Minimum Wage Utopia Just Hit A Brick Wall
FIRST - ZERO HEDGE | ON A LONG ENOUGH TIMELINE THE SURVIVAL RATE FOR ... | JULY 22, 2015
http://pulse.me/s/4mXkH2

Who could have possibly seen this coming? Almost three years we first detailed how America has become an entitlement nation ... read more

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

More Chidren Live In Poverty Now Than During Crisis

As USA Today reports,

About 22% of children in the U.S. lived below the poverty line in 2013, compared with 18% in 2008, the foundation's 2015 Kids Count Data Book reported. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Human and Health Service's official poverty line was $23,624 for a family with two adults and two children.

For all the back-patting exuberance over manipulated record high stock prices and record periods of illusory job gains, it appears the administration and its Obamanomics forgot one important thing - the children! As USA Today reports, a higher percentage of children live in poverty now than did during the Great Recession, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released Tuesday.

"Where you grew up is similar to where you end up when you're an adult," Bloome said. "That helps perpetuate racial segregation."

Obamanomics? More Chidren Live In Poverty Now Than During Crisis

http://pulse.me/s/4loKgc
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Monday, July 20, 2015

Re: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind

I was there! And I had my camera.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:07 AM, <dude> wrote:
I watched it on tv!


On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 10:17 AM, <I> wrote:

46 years ago today!



Iowa poll: Scott Walker cracks 20 percent, leads nearest contender by almost 10 points

Iowa poll: Scott Walker cracks 20 percent, leads nearest contender by almost 10 points
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/07/20/iowa-poll-scott-walker-cracks-20-percent-leads-nearest-contender-by-almost-10-points/



That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind

46 years ago today!

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Hillary Clinton Made More than Bernie Sanders’ Net Worth in One Speech

WOW!

Hillary Clinton Made More than Bernie Sanders' Net Worth in One Speech

AP

Hillary Clinton is trying to make history by becoming one of the oldest and richest Americans to be elected president in the modern era. Bernie Sanders, despite being embarrassingly poor by comparison, is also running for the Democratic nomination.

How rich is Hillary Clinton? Well, in addition to earning (along with Bill) more than $30 million since 2014, Hillary earned more than Sanders' entire net worth in one speech sponsored by telecom giant Qualcomm.

Sanders reported a net worth of $330,507 in 2013. In October of 2014, Hillary earned $335,000 to speak at a Qualcomm event in San Diego. The tech company, which has donated generously to the Clinton Foundation, has also lobbied the federal government to approve the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Sanders is firmly opposed to the agreement; so are labor unions and liberal heartthrob Elizabeth Warren. Hillary, meanwhile, has repeatedly failed to take a position, despite having praised the agreement on numerous occasion during her time as secretary of state.

Several months after the Qualcomm speech, Clinton was paid $150,000 to address the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, an institution that has been the subject of multiple U.S. investigations, and has been accused of helping Enron commit fraud by misleading investors. Clinton's total haul for those two speeches alone ($485,000) is greater than Marco Rubio's reported net worth ($443,509 in 2013).

hillarymoney

   permalink.

0bama-lain secures peace for our time. #Iran

Chamberlain-esq, haha

jon gabriel (@exjon) tweeted at 2:41 AM on Tue, Jul 14, 2015:
Obama secures peace for our time. #Iran

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Bernie Sanders: Real Unemployment Rate is 10.5%

Bernie 2016!  He's right you know.

Bernie Sanders: Real Unemployment Rate is 10.5%

Sanders says rate ignores those who have dropped out of the labor force
Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders / AP

BY:
July 8, 2015 3:14 pm

Presidential candidate and self-identified socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) expressed his concern over Americans who have dropped out of the labor force, saying "real unemployment is 10.5 percent," at a presidential campaign rally in Portland, Maine, the Daily Caller reported.

"When you talk about the economy, we also have to have an honest assessment of unemployment in America," said the senator. "Once a month the government publishes a set of figures, and the last figures they published said that official unemployment was 5.4 percent."

"But there is another set of government statistics and that says that real unemployment, if you include those people who have given up looking for work and the millions of others who are working part-time 20, 25 hours a week when they want to work full-time, if you add all of that together, real unemployment is 10.5 percent," said Sanders.

Sanders also focused his remarks on youth unemployment, citing unemployment rates for 17 to 20 year olds.

"But let me tell you something that is even more frightening and is an issue that we don't talk about at all," he said. "That is the tragedy in this country of youth unemployment."

"And I don't care if no one else talks about this issue, we will talk about this issue and here's why," Sanders continued. "For young people, who have graduated high school or dropped out of high school who are between the ages of 17 and 20 if they happen to be white, unemployment rate is 33 percent. If they are Hispanic—unemployment rate is 36 percent. If they are African-American—real unemployment rate for young people is 51 percent."

"In other words what we are doing is turning our backs on an entire generation of young people who want to get a job, they want to earn some income, they want get out of their homes—they want to become independent and we are not allowing them to do that," he said.

The Obama administration often touts the nation's official unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of those in the labor force that does not have a job but has actively looked for one in the past four weeks.

On July 2, 2015, when the latest unemployment numbers were released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), President Obama praised the economy in his remarks to the University of Wisconsin.

"Now, this morning, we learned that our businesses created another 223,000 jobs this month," said Obama. "And the unemployment rate is now down to 5.3 percent. Keep in mind, when I came into office it was hovering around 10 percent. All told, we've now seen 64 straight months of private sector job growth, which is a new record."

Many, like Sanders, disagree that the unemployment rate tells the whole story, as the measure doesn't account for those who have dropped out of the labor force.

Gallup CEO Jim Clifton has called the unemployment rate a "lie" and said it is misleading.

"There's no other way to say this," said Clifton. "The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed amounts to a big lie."

Watch the cyber war in realtime...

Is This What The First World Cyber War Looks Like: Global Real Time Cyber Attack Map

Tyler Durden's picture
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/08/2015 12:42 -0400


After a series of cyber failures involving first UAL, then this website, then the NYSE which is still halted, then the WSJ, some have suggested that this could be a concerted cyber attack (perhaps by retaliatory China unhappy its stocks are plunging) focusing on the US. So we decided to look at a real-time cyber attack map courtesy of Norsecorp which provides real time visibility into global cyber attacks.

What clearly stands out is that for some reason Chinese DDOS attacks/hackers seem to be focusing on St. Louis this morning.

Whether this is related to the series of suspicious cyber failures today, is so far unclear, although if there is a connection at least there is a way to keep track of the first global cyberwar in real-time.

Sunday, July 05, 2015

Athens on the Potomac | Ricochet

Link below for the whole article. ..

It's an imperfect analogy, but imagine the green is your salary, the yellow is the amount you're spending over your salary, and the red is your MasterCard statement.

The chart is brutally bipartisan. Debt increased under Republican presidents and Democrat presidents. It increased under Democrat congresses and Republican congresses. In war and in peace, in boom times and in busts, after tax hikes and tax cuts, the Potomac flowed ever deeper with red ink.

Our leaders like to talk about sustainability. Forget sustainable — how is this sane?

Yet when a conservative hesitates before increasing spending, he's portrayed as a madman. When a Republican offers a thoughtful plan to reduce the debt over decades, he's pushing grannies into the Grand Canyon and pantsing park rangers on the way out. While the press occasionally griped about spending under Bush, they implore Obama to spend even more.

When I posted the earlier version of this chart, the online reaction was intense. A few on the right thought I was too tough on the GOP while those on the left claimed it didn't matter or it's all a big lie. Others told me that I should have weighted for this variable or added lines for that trend. They are free to create their own charts to better fit their narrative and I'm sure they will. But the numbers shown above can't be spun by either side.

All of the figures come from the U.S. Treasury and math doesn't care about fairness or good intentions. Spending vastly more than you have, decade after decade, is foolish when done by a Republican or a Democrat. Two plus two doesn't equal 33.2317 after you factor in a secret "Social Justice" multiplier.

If our current president accumulates debt at the rate of his first six-plus years, the national debt will be nearly $20 trillion by the time leaves office. That is almost double what it was when he was first inaugurated.

Like many Americans, I haven't had the privilege of visiting Greece. Unfortunately, Greece will be visiting us unless we change things and fast.

Athens on the Potomac | Ricochet

https://ricochet.com/athens-on-the-potomac/

read more

Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Hillary Clinton Lives the High Life While Unpaid Staffers Struggle to Survive

It's good to be rich! She and Bill have 4 mansions worth a combined $40 million, and way more that Mitt Romney in combined assets.

Meanwhile Marco Rubio has maybe twice what I have in assets, hardly rich - assuridly middle class

Who's out of touch?

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Hillary Clinton Lives the High Life While Unpaid Staffers Struggle to Survive
BY: Andrew Stiles

The Hillary Clinton campaign likes to brag about its frugal ways, but this austere philosophy is not applied consistently. Campaign manager John Podesta may take the bus every now and then, but the Clinton campaign is more than happy to pick up the rent tab for Hillary's personal office in Manhattan and to shell out for a private jet to make sure Hillary doesn't have to interact with any commoners before giving a speech on social inequality.

Meanwhile, the campaign has developed a fondness for unpaid interns, and is increasingly hesitant to pay even experienced employees who have previously held paid positions on Democratic campaigns. Some have dared to speak out, demanding to be paid, to be saved from squalor. The campaign's refusal to value its employees is causing problems for the flock of young staffers who are trying to find living quarters near the campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, where rent prices are so high that even their wealthy parents are reluctant to foot the bill. The New York Times reports [emphasis added]:

For decades, idealistic twenty-somethings have shunned higher-paying and more permanent jobs for the altruism and adrenaline rush of working to get a candidate to the White House. But the staffers who have signed up for the Clinton campaign face a daunting obstacle: the New York City real estate market…

The wealthy donors who contribute to Mrs. Clinton's campaign have proved more comfortable cutting a check than opening their TriBeCa lofts and Upper East Side townhouses to strangers. And Mrs. Clinton's campaign prides itself on living on the cheap and keeping salaries low, which is good for its own bottom line, but difficult for those who need to pay New York City rents.

The lack of affordable housing has put an added burden on the Clinton campaign to play a Craigslist-like role in finding staffers a place to sleep, whether it's pairing them with roommates or pleading with supporters for a spare room.

The tidbit about the donors stands out, because it's so unlike elite liberals to prefer "helping the cause" in ways that confer social status as Right Thinking People (e.g., writing a check) without the personal inconvenience (e.g., hosting an intern). Some of them apparently declined out of concern that letting campaign staffers stay in their luxury Manhattan residences would violate campaign finance laws. (It wouldn't.) Others have been more generous, sort of [emphasis added]:

Scott Murphy, a former congressman representing the area outside Albany, hosted Josh Schwerin, 29, a press aide on the campaign who previously worked for Mr. Murphy, in his Upper West Side co-op before the campaign started.

Mr. Schwerin got what used to serve as a maid's room. "You could touch both walls if you were on the air mattress, and the bathroom was through the kitchen, so he didn't have a lot of privacy," Mr. Murphy said. "But," he added, "it was in line with what he paid for it." (Which was, of course, nothing.) 

Per the Times, the unpaid staffers who are fortunate enough to find their own housing end up shelling out $1,700 a month for a room with no windows. The campaign has turned to the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce for guidance on housing opportunities, the most affordable of which happen to be in less fashionable neighborhoods. Alas, the chamber "has not made much progress in convincing staffers to consider these less gentrified neighborhoods."

Suffering such indignities might make sense for these youngsters if they were working (unpaid) for a principled liberal candidate such as Bernie Sanders, who actually agrees with President Obama's admonition that "at a certain point, you've made enough money." But they're not.


©2015 All Rights Reserved

Hillary Clinton Lives the High Life While Unpaid Staffers Struggle to Survive | Washington Free Beacon
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http://freebeacon.com/blog/hillary-clinton-lives-the-high-life-while-unpaid-staffers-struggle-to-survive/

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